The Dying of the Light
by CatsOnMars
Summary: Once there was something magical and beautiful to her about the idea of being a vampire, of eternal youth and invincibility. She knew better than that by the time she made her decision. Edward/Bella & Jacob/Bella, set after Eclipse.
1. within

_Do not go gentle into that good night  
Old age should burn and rave at close of day  
Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight  
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay  
Do not go gentle into that good night  
Rage, rage against the dying of the light_  
**Dylan Thomas**

* * *

**i. within **

"It could still be another way, you know," Edward says as he and Bella are lying on her bed in his room just looking at each other thoughtfully.

Bella laughs, though there is no real amusement behind it. "We're getting married in two days and you want to back out now?"

He smiles. "Of course I don't want to back out of _marrying _you. That may be the only thing that will convince you I'm not going anywhere. No matter how much...you ever change."

She frowns at him, realizing what this is about. "I'm not the one stopping us from being together as a teenager and granny in sixty years. It's you."

He raises an eyebrow. "I'm afraid you have to explain that."

"You've made it quite clear how well you're going to handle it if I die," she says, trying to put as much mocking sarcasm in her tone as she can. "So how could I do anything but promise to stay with you forever?"

She is smiling, idly running a finger along his collarbone inside the open collar of his shirt, but he finds himself unable to smile back. Is this how it is? Still? He just looks back at her seriously, not able to say it. She's right. They are getting married in two days and they've made all the necessary arrangements to make it look like they're going to live in Alaska two weeks after that. There can't possibly be any stopping her now.

"Edward," she says softly, nestling herself closer to him with her face buried against him under his chin. "You know something could _still_ happen to me. I've only known your family for a couple years and I've already seen more than enough to show me you're pretty capable of making enemies. And - "

"Oh, Bella," he interrupts, smoothing a hand down her back, "you don't have anything to be afraid of. Surely you've also seen enough to show you that we look out for each other in this family. I'd never let anything happen - "

"That's not what I'm worried about," she says in a slightly exasperated voice. "I just . . . I wish more than anything, even more than I want to be with you for the rest of my entire existence, that I could just know you'll be okay even if something ever _does_ happen to me."

"I would be fine," he promises. "Granted I . . . could somehow find relief from my suffering soon afterwards."

She sighs heavily. "That doesn't help at _all._"

"I'm sorry, love. What do you want me to tell you? That I could just one day stop being incomplete without you? I can't say that. When you become one of us, you'll understand how these things are unfortunately different for our kind. I will never be able to stop needing you exactly as much as I do now. And I would never stop mourning you."

She pulls back away from him a little so she can look up at him, directly into his eyes. "But I'd never _stop_ being a part of you," she tells him firmly. "If I died and you went on living, you would continue to carry the most important part of me with you. _Because_ it's so set in stone and never-changing, your love will always make me more immortal than anything. That's how I've started to see it. And you know what else?" She takes one of his hands and places it over her heart. "You can't tell me you have no soul. Because I know you do; I have it with me right here. Even if I'm the only thing in the world that redeems you for what you are, I'm going to take care of it."

An unreadable, intense look crosses over Edward's face. He takes her face in both his hands and kisses her forehead with his eyes squeezed closed almost like he's in pain, and then he puts another delicate kiss on each of her closed eyelids, his lips cool as metal. She feels like a dead body being burned with coins placed over each of her eyes for her to pay the ferryman to take her across the river Styx. A shiver goes down her back, but not from the cold sensation; it is like the sudden thrill and fluttering of your heartbeat when your car in a rollercoaster starts moving and you suddenly hope you're strapped in right, that this is a good idea. _Here we go,_ she thinks darkly.


	2. without

**ii. without**

I am not giving up on you, he thinks. He promises. Jacob told her, "I'll always be waiting in the wings" and he meant it. He knows it will ultimately be easier for him if he just accepts that it is over. But that is accepting not just that there is no hope for him, but none for _her_, and he can't do it.

When a heart is in love it will not be helped by any rationality or reason. It is poisoned with a desperate, viciously tenacious hope that thrives on something completely separated from the mind. Part of him simply is not capable of giving up, no matter what he knows and what he tells himself.

So every night these days he lies with his eyes wide open unable to sleep, every beat of his heart pounding out a silent prayer that is completely unstoppable and out of his control. No. No. Don't give up. Do not just surrender to it like this and say goodbye, _fight_ it, stay. Live. Please. Live. 


	3. sleep, sweetheart

**iii. sleep, sweetheart**

She always knew it was going to be bad. Horrible, a living nightmare. But she also knew that thinking about it a lot was only going to make her feel terrified rather than do any good. But perhaps she could have prepared herself for it better. Perhaps not.

At first they planned to leave Forks and take Bella somewhere secluded and far from any other people before going through with it, but she got restless and was going so crazy from the fear and anticipation she wanted to get it over with. So when Jasper comes home and finds Bella thrashing wildly on the carpet with Edward holding her in place across his lap and Alice clutching her hand, his voice is heard sounding deep and grave as he comes close and immediately feels it - all of it.

"Oh my God." He is standing in the doorway of Edward's room, looking pityingly over at where she and the others are on the floor, and she is only vaguely aware of hearing his voice speaking; he sounds far, far away. "I thought you weren't going to yet."

Edward looks up at him, not even bothering to explain now. "Jasper?" he says in a pleading, desperate tone. "Please. . ."

"You know I can only do so much to help physical pain like that," he says regretfully, and Bella loses the rest of what they all say to the roaring in her head, but it seems that for a while she is not so aware of the pain, desensitized to it. For just a while. And then it is unbearable again, every part of her feeling like it's on fire, the sweat running endlessly. She is feverish and half-delirious, forgetting where she is and not understanding what's happening anymore.

Then she thinks it's day. Then she thinks it's night. Then she thinks she can tell it's still night when it shouldn't still be - _where_ is the sun? Are there curtains over the windows? How much longer does she have left before it's over? Time seems to be disappearing entirely. Maybe in a way, it is.

Edward is there, she realizes in this moment when she can think again - probably always has been, though she wasn't always aware of it. He is saying something in her ear, attempting to soothe her, but the words are just whispers of the air, nothing she understands right now. This is how it is for what seems like another ten days rather than just a few; she writhes and yells out wordlessly and screams piercingly without even hearing it with her own ears and he is with her every moment feeling it all with her, hating that there's nothing more he can do than just be there. Then at some times she doesn't want anyone near her. She throws anyone off of her who tries to touch her - even him. This disturbs him so much that Jasper starts looking at him sadly as much as he looks at her that way, and as Edward sits helplessly watching her shriek and squirm and thrash on the floor like a fish out of water dying, Jasper puts a hand on his shoulder at one point and does his best to make it more bearable for him, too.

Bella makes her fingertips bleed digging them into the floor. She does not even notice it when her nails start making deep, effortless grooves in it and there is no longer any bleeding. Edward tries to come to her again, but everything scares her right now. She does not remember who he is. She hates him. He is the one who did this to her. As she lies back on the floor taking huge, rasping breaths with all of her skin glistening with sweat, he reaches for her face and she lunges for him viciously, a fierce and wild growl escaping her that sounds much too loud for a sound coming out of _her_, something strange and terrifying. Before she strikes him he has both of her wrists and pins her arms down on the floor, trying to make her settle down by muttering calm, quiet words.

"Bella, it's alright," he says, his voice sounding torn in two and barely audible. "Listen to me, Bella. I'm right here with you and you're going to be fine in just a while. I think the worst of it is almost over. It's almost over . . ."

She struggles out of his grasp and rolls over, curling up into a ball with a low moan. He sinks completely into a sitting position and turns away from Bella, unable to watch anymore right now, putting his arm over his face as he leans his head down and letting out a great exhaling sigh.

He thinks of what she said about how he is the only thing stopping her from growing old, and how it terrified him but he didn't say anything. It is still not a choice she made for the right reasons. This is all still just her trying to make everyone else happy.

Why? _Why_ didn't he lie and tell her she was right, that he would be okay even if he lost her? Why didn't he stop her? Why did he ever take her to the meadow that day to show her the reason monsters like him have to hide from the sunlight and let everything start even after he knew what Alice had seen? Why did he pursue her when he knew he shouldn't have?

Why didn't he just let her die that day Tyler's truck was supposed to slide right into her? He never did give her an answer to that. And thinking of the answer now, the reason he thought he had any right, he hates himself.

Finally, near the end of the third day, Alice suddenly looks alertly toward Bella, knowing: it's here, it's nearly done. Edward is holding her hand even though she does not seem to feel it or see him sitting by her as she lies still now, trembling and still gasping every breath. He can still hear her heart beating steadily - the most important sound in his world, he told her. But then suddenly it starts to hammer fast and hard, as if raging and fighting against the end with a few last determined beats.

Thump-thump. Thump-thump. Thump-thump. Thump.

...Thump.

Then nothing, and Edward stops breathing.

Alice has come to kneel at her side along with Edward now, and everyone else is standing near, closely watching. It is immediately easy to tell when the change is done; the color drains from her skin all over, in just a second, as if the lighting around her just changed and made it appear to be a different tint. Slowly, she opens her eyes, and Edward is suddenly terrified beyond speech or movement as the firey red irises stare up at him.

Esme drops to the floor by her as well now, stroking her face with her hand. "Bella?" she says softly. "How do you feel, honey?"

Edward squeezes her hand, and his voice comes out sounding weak. "Please say something."

Her eyes roll back away from being pointed at Esme to looking at him, and something in them seems to become more focused and calm. She whispers, "Edward."

He sighs heavily. He pulls her up into a sitting position, holding her against his chest. She closes her eyes again and says quietly, "I feel . . . so tired. . ."

But there will be no sleep. This is it. She cannot sleep ever again.


	4. long  distance friendship

**iv. long-distance friendship**

Jacob didn't come to the wedding, of course. There was no word from him. Not the smallest, most painless kind of communication possible made just to say congratulations, or I was almost going to go but, or I wanted you to know somehow I'm okay with it and not to worry about me but the thing is, or I just wanted to hear your voice a last time while you're still here.

For as soon as she was Mrs. Edward Cullen it must have felt to him like she was already gone.

But at the end of the summer, after word got around town that all the Cullens' kids had left town and Bella and Edward had both gone off to the University of Alaska, he knew better and figured out what was happening. Maybe he went stalking around the Cullens' house as a wolf to listen a couple times. Perhaps he could not have missed the screaming and the painful intensity in the air from a great distance away even in human form. But however he knows all about it, in the morning after the third day as Bella is curled up in Edward's lap in a deadly silence brought on partially by shock and partially by complete exertion, he looks down at her as he runs his fingers soothingly through her hair and says very quietly, "There's something left on the porch for you."

At first, she has no interest in going to look. She isn't even interested enough to wonder. She doesn't care. But Edward convinces her she should go see "before somebody steps on them."

Bella feels like she's in a dream right now, and drifts to the front door absently, not feeling like her feet are really making contact with the floor or her hand with the door handle. She opens the door and finds six brightly colored flowers laid on the mat in front of her. Wild flowers, not ones bought from a store, as beautiful as the ones that grow in her and Edward's meadow.

She knows it is no wedding present. This does not signify a sentiment of "congratulations" or "good luck" - it's something very different. Flowers left on a grave.

And somehow, even though she cannot see into anyone else's mind like Edward can, she understands his intended message perfectly. They are forever separated now, but it doesn't matter to him. He still loves her and will always love her. Unconditionally. Immutably.

This is when the numbness of the dream-like shock starts to wear off, and she can feel that she is really here. She is also very aware once again of the tear in her now-still heart and realizes that nothing there has changed. And she knows that if it still there now, it is always going to be there. Vampires may be physically invincible, but there are other ways they are perhaps much more terribly vulnerable than humans. 


	5. dead flowers

**v. dead flowers**

Once there was something magical and beautiful to her about the idea of being a vampire, of eternal youth and invincibility. She knew better than that by the time she made her decision. She knows they are not flying off to Neverland. They are not flying anywhere. They are falling, down, down, into a dark and freezing cold place there is no returning from. She cannot change her mind and go back if she decides she wants to grow up after all.

But she reminds herself this is not like Hades and Persephone. Persephone did not actually have a choice. And that, she knows, can make all the difference.

As she sits on the back porch of the Cullens' house - now _her_ house and home also - and watches the rain, she looks down at the moon-shaped scar on her right hand, and thinks of how it used to be the only part of her that had that iredescent sparkle in sunlight. She thinks a while of the girl she used to be at sixteen, at thirteen, at eight. A girl who loved summer and the bright sun and wearing airy, gauzy tops and blouses with eyelets. She thought when she moved to Forks she had managed to say goodbye to the sun, but of course she hadn't. She couldn't have had any idea then how profoundly she would really end up severing herself from that former self, that young girl version of Isabella she remembers, and leaving the light behind.

Maybe she never would have come. It's not like she ever would have known what she was missing.


	6. i'll carry you

**vi. i'll carry you**

The transformation process was nothing. That was only the beginning of how ugly and unbearable it gets.

Edward helps a lot. It is assuring to her to know that he is always keeping her in check and is not going to let her make any mistakes she'll regret. This is a promise she knows will most certainly be kept. He cannot allow there to be any reason for him to think that letting her join them was a mistake. Nearly every one of the Cullens has killed humans for blood at least once. They are unnatural freaks and fallen angels with no place anywhere. They shouldn't exist, as he says. Yet he has allowed her to exist this way, and it can't be undone.

But there are some days that resisting human blood feels practically impossible because the instinct is so strong, like trying to kill yourself by holding your breath when the body just will not allow it. The ways she reacts to it do not seem like her, like Bella, making her feel more than ever like she has been locked in a stranger's body in a disorienting nightmare. She is constantly irritable and has discovered quickly just how strong she's become because slamming her hand against a wall as she's growling something in frustration makes the whole house shudder. Sometimes she uses foul language, words that Edward has never even known to be in her vocabulary before. It makes Emmett laugh.

She is ravenously, torturously thirsty all of the time. Edward, Carlisle, and Alice took her out as soon as she was ready and helped her hunt deer and raccoons. It is not of much help at all.

"Animals aren't going to taste very good to you yet," Edward explained. "Your body has to get used to it first. All it wants is human blood now."

Like he has to tell her this. They spend their days around the house with a cold few feet of air between them sometimes as they sit in silence, and it almost feels like even her desire for him has become secondary.

Today, though, she is calm and tired, relaxing in his arms as they sit on the couch in his dimly lit room with an Ella Fitzgerald CD playing as the moonlight pours through the window on them. "I'm sorry," she says quietly. "We shouldn't have done it here, still around so many people. I should have let us wait. . ."

"It's all right," he says. "You have to get used to it somehow."

She groans softly. "And meanwhile, drive all of you crazy."

Edward laughs lightly. "Believe me, we _did_ know what to expect. Actually, you're doing considerably well for being at this stage. I didn't even have to force you to leave that hiker alone when we were leaving the meadow the other day."

It's impossible for Bella to believe what she's going through now could be seen as doing _well_. "I'm just sorry I have to get into such a rotten mood all the time. Some happy and loving newlyweds we are."

He laughs again. "Aren't we, though?" he says half-seriously. "Listen, if you have to deal with this all for me I can certainly deal with you. I can't imagine that this is much worse than what a husband has to tolerate for nine months while his wife's pregnant."

She doesn't laugh. It isn't until he looks down at her suddenly desolate face that he realizes what an entirely wrong thing to say it was. She stares away from him as still as a statue, suddenly picturing two black-haired children who were killed along with the old Bella a week after her wedding day.

Edward pulls her more tightly against him, rubbing a hand up and down her back. "This will all pass," he promises. "It gets easier." And the truth of this depends entirely on what exactly he is referring to - which thing that is difficult.

When he looks down at her again, she is thoughtlessly playing with the silver linked bracelet on her wrist, turning it so that the little red wolf charm and the sparkling heart skim over her wrist again and again in turn. She wears it on the same hand as her wedding ring, both always there, attached permanently to her.

It does get easier, but in a few more months she is still prone to complete losses of control sometimes. She keeps a great distance between herself and humans whenever she can, and will never go near them without Edward staying right at her side.

One day, they and Alice are in a mall and right in front of them a little girl trips and scrapes her arm against a stone pillar. As soon as Edward smells the blood he anticipates what will happen, and Bella has only twitched in the girl's direction when he grabs her and pulls her away into a hall that goes back into some restrooms.

"Bella, _Bella!_" Alice says quietly as she struggles against Edward restraining her from lunging back toward the child. "Relax. Listen to me, you've got to hold your breath - "

She doesn't even process what's being said to her. All she is aware of is the smell of the little girl's blood and _God_, it's coming from _right out there_ in front of them -

As she brings a fist slamming against Edward's chest to try to force herself out of his grasp, something makes a tiny crunching sound that she would not hear nearly as clearly if she were still human. Edward looks down at her left hand with wide eyes, and everything sobers; she turns her wrist to see the tiny remains of the wolf charm on her bracelet crumbling, easily and mightily smashed into dust.

Bella stops resisting Edward's hold on her so abruptly that he doesn't have the chance to adjust to it and support her weight before she sinks to the floor onto her suddenly weak knees, her eyes big and unfocused, looking at something very far away from there. She suddenly remembers the name of a boy called Jacob Black, and all of these other fragile, small things. The recipe for Charlie's favorite dinner. The words of a Dylan Thomas poem she studied as a high school freshman. The colors in the dress that her mother is wearing in the picture of her she used to keep in her locker. Her stuffed elephant she got for Christmas when she was seven and named Peanut.

All of these things suddenly seem so elusive and impermanent. They slip through her fingers like dream sand as she tries to grab onto them and make them always hers. But they already feel like something that happened in someone else's life, one completely different from the vivid, crystal clear one she's in now that she remembers every moment of so far in flawless detail. If she is not careful to remember those other things, they will all crumble into dust. For her former life was made up of delicate and momentary things, not hard diamonds. In a lot of ways, more precious things.


	7. playing dead

**vii. playing dead**

"You know it's time to take care of things," Edward says to her, and she won't look up from her book to meet his eyes.

They talked about this. After a while they won't be able to keep up the charade of e-mails and occasional phonecalls. And it will be easier for Charlie and Renée if they think they know what happened to her than it will be if they never know for sure. Bella can adopt a fake identity, a new last name, in the place they go, and they will convincingly fake Bella Swan Cullen's death.

But who is faking anyway?

A desperate, pleading part of her isn't ready for this. _Why now? I can have a couple more years, or just another year, a few more months, before I have to say goodbye for good._

But the other half of her pushes those thoughts away, like a rough hand forcing a misbehaving child to sit down in a chair - _Be quiet!_

No. She chose this. There is no compromise. She must accept it completely.


	8. one who will get a happy ending

**viii. one who will get a happy ending**

They still come around to Forks sometimes, though they don't allow themselves to be seen. Bella and Edward like to visit the meadow together and she goes to Charlie's house and watches him sometimes. He seems to be doing okay. At least as okay as anybody can be doing when they lost a child ten years ago who, no matter what, is never coming back.

One time when she meets back up with Edward after spying on Charlie attempting to cook himself macaroni, he tells her he encountered Embry in the forest. "He's going through a tough time," he says, and his voice is actually a little sincerely regretful. "It's likely that a friend of his has a brain tumor. He was only phasing to get away from everything for a little while."

Something in his face makes Bella keep looking at him and waiting. There's something else.

Slowly, reluctantly, he meets her eyes. "Bella. . ." He looks distressed, clearly not wanting to have to say something, but knowing he needs to bring it up and get it out there.

After waiting a long moment with him still not continuing, she has to say, "What is it?"

"It's . . . It's nothing _bad_, exactly. . ."

Bella waits another long moment. "Jacob?" she guesses, her voice tiny.

He looks at her a long time again before finally explaining simply. "He imprinted."

As she goes completely silent, looking down at the ground, he stares at her closely, searching carefully for her reaction.

"Tell me," she says calmly, but still not meeting his eyes.

He hesitates only a second. "He met her just four months ago. She's a grade school teacher from Seattle named Megan. She was passing through town and her car broke down, and he saw her stranded on a street in La Push and pulled over to help...and, well..."

She nods. Her face looks strangely empty. "Well. That's good. He should be happy like that. I'm...glad."

Even though she really is happy for him - or maybe_ relieved_ is a better word - the words somehow feel wrong coming out of her mouth. It reminds her of when you find out someone is pregnant and you're not sure if "congratulations" is the right thing to say because you don't know if it was planned. She knows much too well how falling in love can sometimes almost be more trouble than it's worth. La Push and Seattle are not that far, but still a considerable distance, apart - enough to separate two lives. That woman's car breaking down might not have been a blessing in disguise but nothing besides a complete life-altering and troublesome inconvenience. If it hadn't happened, it's not like she ever would have known what she was missing.

No, Bella suddenly thinks, surprising herself. That's no way to look at it. It would be unforgivable for someone else to not take what a small, dormant part of her still badly wants but can't have.

"A schoolteacher . . . How old is she?" she asks, her voice merely curious.

He raises his eyebrows. "A year younger than him."

She can't help but look a little surprised.

"You do realize Jacob Black is now twenty-seven?"

She nods, but not until after a long moment. Yes, she realizes it, but it's hard to imagine. She will always remember him as being sixteen, an embodiment of teenage youth and the kind of carelessness and ease that comes with it.

She thinks of Jacob joking about how it would be amusing to see if she would be jealous if this ever happened. Smiling a little facetiously, she asks in a light and expectant tone, "So? Is she pretty?"

Edward looks to the side at her, looking taken aback. Then what is exchanged between their eyes in the next few seconds makes them both start to laugh lightly at the same time. They have to laugh because it's too much. Life and love is too complicated to take all of it seriously without going mad.


	9. as strong as death

**ix. as strong as death**

In 2039 Jasper and Alice go to college together and Jasper is studying philosophy. Again. He wants to get a doctorate this time.

"I think he's just amused by the idea of becoming _Dr. Hale_ for a degree in something as useless as philosophy," Edward says to Bella in confidence, smirking in the dark.

"I think philosophy is _very_ useful for us," she contradicts in her strong voice that has matured to sound much more confident over the past couple decades. "When you don't have to worry about making a good paycheck but you're going to be living as long as you please and maybe then some, you better figure out the meaning of life while you're at it."

"I don't think you discover the meaning of your life in school, my love," he says in a warm and teasing tone, gazing down at her with a meaningful look in his eyes. "Well . . . that's unless Biology class counts."

She grins vibrantly in the moving shadows of the trees in their back yard and leans over to kiss him. They roll in the grass together, giggling and with their lips in smiles even as they kiss, Edward settling comfortably between her legs, but holding her face in his hands as delicately as one handles a hollow egg shell. Sometimes he still touches her so carefully, like he is forgetting he couldn't accidentally crush her anymore. Old habits must die hard for creatures with such perfect memories. She likes it. It somehow makes moments with him feel more rare and precious, more like something stolen that they're lucky to have. Even when she was human and she really was helpless and could be effortlessly hurt by him, there was always something oddly satisfying about knowing that even though he was so powerful, he was in control and could never actually harm her. Maybe she just has a bit of a masochist kink, she thinks, and cracks up laughing so that Edward stops kissing the hollow of her neck and looks at her like she's crazy.

Sometimes when Jasper leaves his schoolwork lying around, she looks through his books. Edward comes over and lies across the couch next to her while she's reading a book called _Man's Search For Meaning_, resting his head in her lap and looking up at the title.

"Ah. Viktor Frankl," he says. "Doing Jasper's homework for him, are you?"

She giggles. "Have you read it?" He shakes his head. "It's quite . . . inspiring. The way he writes about being in a concentration camp is unbelievable."

Edward sighs. "Good grief, like I want to be reminded of _those_ days. If there was ever a time I felt so little sympathy for the most despicable kind of human beings . . . I don't know what stopped me from leaving Carlisle and Esme again after that," he adds darkly.

"You'd be surprised how warm and fuzzy it can make you feel for being a recollection of the Holocaust."

She keeps reading a while, and then he says, his voice softer, "Tell me about it."

So she reads him a specific passage from the book she likes, which describes how Frankl had been separated from his wife in camps for so long that he had no idea if she was dead or alive, and how one morning as he was walking to a work site something made him think of her and he had a vivid vision of her face in his head, as clear as if she were standing right before him. At that moment it did not make any difference to his ability to withstand all of his suffering whether she was alive or dead, because he realized she was so much a part of him. Just the memory of being with her was enough to keep him strong and make him want to survive, even if he may never see her again.

"And?" Edward asks after she finishes reading and starts staring off into the air, thinking. "When he got out, was his wife alive or not?"

She looks down at him and shakes her head, and he frowns. Then she stares off directionlessly some more, in deep thought again, and he notices.

"Please tell me what you're thinking," he says. He still can never tell for himself, of course.

She has to think of a way to put it into words before she speaks. "I was remembering the time you left me," she says, and it comes out easily; this is not a frightening, sensitive subject anymore. "The way Frankl saw his wife's face so clearly even though she wasn't there and it comforted him so much . . . It reminded me of how I used to hear your voice on my own when I thought I was never going to see you again. And I was just thinking that even if you never came back to me, I could have been okay. It wasn't impossible. I could have been happy if I just _chose_ to be. If I'd really tried."

Edward's expression is still and calm. "Yes. I know," he says after a long stretch of silence. He sits up and holds her against him tightly, inhaling the scent of her hair deeply. "That's why I'm thankful every single moment that you still chose me."

She hugs him back, and he is not being careful today but squeezing her so tight she can barely keep breathing. "I'm glad I did, too," she whispers, and it's always true, but today she knows it's true and that makes all the difference.


	10. permanence and fragility

**x. permanence and fragility**

Bella does not return to Forks much at all anymore now that Charlie and Renée are both gone. There's no reason. But suddenly she keeps thinking of that place which may be the only one she'll ever think of as her true home and becomes restless, feeling like she needs to go back there now but not knowing why. She tries to ignore the feeling for months until she finally tells Edward, and without looking at her strangely at all he says, "Alright. If it's bothering you this much, by all means let's go." But his tone is strangely formal and controlled, and she wonders if he suspects who this is about.

She doesn't even worry about staying hidden. If by some crazy chance someone who would recognize her is still alive and living there, she certainly looks different enough now that she can tell them she's just a relative of Bella Swan.

It takes a couple days after she arrives for her to figure out that Jacob died two months ago. Maybe that nagging in the back of her head was just the unconscious realization that he was getting old enough that he may not be around in this world for much longer. She has never thought much about his current age and always continued to imagine him exactly as she knew him, but after all, she can do math.

Edward is so sorry and sympathetic that it practically melts her to see the sad way he looks at her for a while. He and Jacob may have been natural enemies as well as opponents in a dirty game, pulling ruthlessly in a tug-of-war over her, but any inclinations to still feel animosity toward him are clearly diminished. Death has a way of making things like that completely go away. He helps Bella inconspicuously find out where exactly he was buried. She wants to do the same for him that he did for her when she left his world. But the answer is just what she fears. His grave is somewhere in La Push. Where she cannot go.

"I'm okay. Really," she assures Edward when he finds her standing outside alone and asks her for a third time that day if she's all right. "It's just . . . I know I hadn't even seen him for the best part of a lifetime and maybe it's silly for it to matter this much, but I just can't believe he's_ gone._ It doesn't seem possible."

Edward sits down on a patio chair and pulls her down into his lap. "You know he isn't gone," he says, and he puts his hand over her heart. She stares at his face in awe. It is like he has suddenly seen into her soul and easily found something she didn't even know is there. Still there.

Humans make this gesture all the time, touching their chests, saying "It's okay, the ones we love live on in here," but it does not mean the same thing. Because Bella's heart no longer beats. It is in a permanent state that will never cease.

After they leave Forks again, Bella is still very reclusive and quiet for a long time. Because she found the obituary to read it and it said, _He is survived by his older sister Rachel Black, his wife Megan Cheung Black, and their three children; William II, Logan, and Bella._

There would have been no secrets at all between him and his human soul mate, of course. This one thing she does not tell Edward about.

She starts thinking a lot about one of the last dreams she remembers having when she could still sleep, prompted most likely by all of Jacob's comments about how things _would_ have been. In the dream she saw exactly how it would have happened if things had been different that day after Harry died when Edward called the house and reappeared into her life just at the right time for her to still be all his. She knew when she woke up that the dream only meant she finally had a complete understanding of herself and her feelings, and of the way Jacob felt about her, and that she was not making her choice in any kind of ignorance anymore. Because in this dream that last kiss they shared before he went off to fight Victoria's army, the one he said should have been their first, really did happen first, there in her kitchen.

It amazes her how vividly she still remembers something like this from her human life, a mere dream; maybe her mind is just still able to fill in all the missing pieces she doesn't remember because she still knows exactly how it would go. Her mind was ringing in a panic as he leaned in so close, but as soon as he closed the distance with the most gentle and cautious kiss, everything in her head went quiet. It was okay. She could do this. _She_ was okay - perfectly alive. Better than alive. He was as slow and sensitive as a surgeon opening up a patient, because he had her fragile, damaged heart and their friendship and everything in the world that mattered then held in his hands and had to handle it so _carefully_, not too much, not too fast. But she responded to it naturally, allowing him to ease her mouth open and raising her hands to his face. They lost themselves in it, completely forgetting about it if this was a strange time and place for a first kiss to happen, drawing it out for an unmeasured amount of time, always slow, and Bella felt more than heard him give a long, relaxed exhale of breath like a sigh before pulling away. Then they were just holding each other, Jacob pulling her tight against him. His touch was not delicate and careful, not feeling like something airy and cool that might just blow away, but strong, solid, and seizing.

She could feel his heart thumping as she held him close around his middle. Then he said in a slightly amused voice, "You're shaking like a rattlesnake."

She laughed softly into his hot chest. "Sorry. I guess in a way it's my first time . . . being with a . . . boy."

He laughed, too, and said, "I guess that's true." Then he turned his head to put a soft kiss on her temple and rubbed his hand up and down her back, warming it to be almost as hot as him, smoothing out her nervous trembling into relaxed, steady breaths. Then his two big hands took her by the waist and lifted her up onto the counter so that her head was then level with his, and he continued to hold her.

"Bella," he said very quietly. His voice had a kind of vulnerability in it she had never seen in him before - not then, in the dream. "I love you, you know."

He must have felt her breathing immediately slow, almost stop. After just a beat of silence he quickly added, "I'm sorry; please don't feel like you have to say anything back. I know this is still difficult for you, and I don't want to make you uncomfortable. But I just - "

That was when the phone rang, and this is the last thing she remembers of the dream.

It could have been like that if everything had happened just a little differently. Things could have been more simple. Or even more complicated. But no matter what there is no one thing that could have been changed to rectify everything. These things can't be blamed on just one person or thing. Edward should never have left her alone long enough for her to get that close to somebody else. She should have been more aware of her feelings all along, not just once she finally kissed him. Jacob should not have been so unforgivably kind, never giving up on her, always there for her even when there was nothing she could give him back.

Maybe they would not have ended up so hurt if the smallest, most seemingly inconsequential things had never been. If Bella had never learned to associate certain sensations relating to him with feeling safe and happy - the smell of his garage, the soothing and reassuringly constant sound of ocean waves, the throat-burning carbonation in a can of warm soda, everything always so warm. If only he hadn't kept his arm around her the night they were driving Mike Newton home in a way that made her feel strangely protected from him. If only he hadn't said "Bells, honey" in that desperate and scared way while she was still just barely conscious after almost drowning and his voice hadn't been the thing to make her realize she wasn't dead, she was alive, and God, what had she been thinking? If only he hadn't grown to look so different and she hadn't noticed that night she hurt her head and the dim light was so beautiful on his skin as he drove her to the hospital with no shirt on. If only he hadn't brought her some of his clothes to change into when she was soaking wet that night that changed everything, making her unable to help but imagine just for a moment what the soft flannel would feel like against her skin, big and warm and comforting like his body.

But love is not something that can be traced to one time or one action as its origin. The things that make one fall in love are subtle manipulations acting imperceptibly, never recognized for what they are until it's too late. Feelings develop because of a variety of things that make up a complex equation nobody understands. Beauty alone will not always start feelings of love, or else Edward would have loved Rosalie. The way someone treats you may be enough to plant the seeds, or may not be.

These are the things Bella thinks about now that Jacob Black is dead, because it has hit her so much harder than she ever could have expected. Her feelings for him were never made up of fragile little things that crumble with time. Those little things may be what attacks the fortress of the heart and opens it up to be vulnerable to someone else, but then love roots itself deep in the soul so that the removal of just one experience, one thing a person said or did that broke through the barrier, cannot possibly pull it out. Many of her memories of Jacob have now become faded and vague like a gallery of unfinished, dull-colored paintings, but the memories are not what matters. He is still as much a part of her as he ever was. She knows this now with painful clarity, but in such a strange way; she knows he is still with her because it hurts unbearably that he is gone and she knows he is still with her because it does not feel at all like he is really gone. And for the first time since Edward gently surrendered and finally bit into her neck sixty years ago, changing her, she wishes she was still able to cry. It is all too heavy to bear now that she is aware of it again, and she is trapped in this body with no release from it. Deep scrapes in stone do not heal like wounds.

And now she keeps hearing Edward's words he said to her long ago: _"I cannot live in a world where you don't exist."_ This was completely true, but not in the way he thought. Maybe Jacob is dead, gone, but for Bella there will never be a world in which he doesn't still exist. As long as she is still living, it will be impossible for no part of him to go on, because it is too late for him to be severed from her. Even if it would be easier for her to forget him and she wanted him to disappear, always he would stay.

Many years ago when he gave her the bracelet with the charm he carved at the graduation party, he said he hoped it would help her remember him, and if he hadn't been in such a bad mood she would have assured him that she could never forget him. Whether she likes it or not, this is always true.


	11. no goodbyes

**xi. no goodbyes**

What she doesn't know is that once every year, on the day one week after the date of her wedding, always at twilight, Jacob went to put flowers in front of her gravestone. One year he brought his little girl when she was three, carrying her on his shoulders. She helped him pick out the flowers this time, though she didn't know what they were for.

He wondered if Bella even knew she had a gravestone despite there being no body for them to find. He wondered if it would annoy her that it says ISABELLA when he knew how much she always hated being called her real name.

If he had anything to say to her whenever he came to pay her this small honor, it was not to wish her well. Not good luck. Not to apologize for things having to be this way. None of those kind of sentiments were right.

He only ever whispered, "Goodnight, Bell. Love you as always."


	12. the cold iron queen

**xii. the cold iron queen**

Renée's birthday comes. These kind of dates always make Bella a little sad. She sits next to Edward on the piano bench, her head leaning on his shoulder, as he softly plays her Satie and Gershwin songs.

Later, sitting behind her on the balcony outside her and Edward's bedroom, Rosalie does her hair. Rosalie has become much less cold toward her, perhaps because even though Bella didn't make the same decision she would have, they do know they have an understanding of each other's feelings of loss. As Bella sits in a deep, thoughtful silence, Rosalie's hands are strangely comforting braiding her hair into an intricate crown; they are soft and gentle unlike her distant and insensitive way of talking, a mother's caring hands. But never a mother's hands.

There is a telescope set up in front of them on the balcony which Edward got her as a gift recently. Last night she was out here for a long time looking at cold little Pluto.

That evening, Alice keeps telling her how nice her hair looks and encourages her to go in the bathroom and look at it in the mirror. When she does, her reflection surprises her somehow, as if it has been a long time since she saw it. As if she was expecting to see the old Bella. Or is it the young one? She can't decide anymore how to think of her in her head.

She looks at her frozen, magnified beauty, her honey-colored eyes, and pale skin like a porcelain doll's - much more so than when Jacob once patted her on the head teasingly and made that comparison. She once thought becoming a vampire would surely make one feel comparitively young and beautiful, invincible, invulnerable. But she still does not notice it if she turns heads walking down the street. She thinks they must be looking at Edward or Alice.

And in an indescribable way, she does not feel young at all. Being young is_ feeling_ invincible, being irresponsibly careless, thinking nothing in the world can happen to you when this is, of course, stupid and dangerous. Being young is riding motocycles and not believing in silly, superstitious stories. But she feels old.


	13. wolf girls

**xiii. wolf girls**

Bella always wears Elizabeth Masen's ring, even if just inconspicuously on a chain around her neck because she and Edward are not currently playing the part of husband and wife where they live. But she only sometimes wears the heart-shaped diamond anymore, only as much as any other piece of jewelry. It seems somehow imbalanced otherwise, when before that bracelet kept _both_ of them there and was appropriately always attached to her. It seems only fair.

Edward notices and doesn't mind, but he thinks she must still not have learned that there's nothing fair about love. She can't split herself up into fair shares. It is nobody's fault - that's just the way it is.

But Bella simply thinks the bracelet is no longer a right representation of the way things are. It doesn't mean what it used to. And nothing material can even mean much to her anymore at all.

A couple years after hearing of Jacob's death, the Cullens decide to return to Forks again. Ivy has covered the windows of their pale white mansion, blocking the sun from coming into many of the rooms except in sparse patches of gold on the floor, and in the parts of the air where light gets through it glistens on the stretched threads of spiderwebs everywhere. They are going by a different name now, but it doesn't take long for a few people on the Quileute reservation to figure out who they must be. Within two weeks someone comes ringing their doorbell, and as Carlisle goes to answer it Edward looks up alertly from the paper he's reading, hearing his thoughts.

"Well, I think we know that kind of smell," he says distastefully.

"Who is it?" Jasper asks.

"An olive branch," Alice answers him with a small grin.

Edward looks to the side at Bella. "Apparently they don't hold anything against us for changing you, after all."

Carlisle comes back followed by a very tall and skinny woman with a long curtain of slick black hair who calmly introduces herself as Bella Black. The room goes stiffly silent when they hear the name.

"Are there still_ wolves _here?" Rosalie asks with an air of disgust, distracted by the potent scent on her, like rotting wet dog, as Bella is simply transfixed looking at the woman. That very familiar awkward scrawniness, and those prominent cheekbones. . .Though the very narrow and quite beautiful eyes are not his, unfamiliar to her.

The woman suddenly looks a little nervous, looking around at the many pairs of golden eyes peering closely at her, and seems unable to answer.

"Only two," Edward answers for her. "Wow. Even _that_ is quite strange. One is the son of Quil and Claire Ateara. She was just talking to him before she came here. She's come to give us a friendly reminder of the terms of the treaty, of course." Then he looks directly at the woman and says, "We got it. Thanks."

She is now looking at Edward with amazement. "So it's true. You're the one who can . . ."

He laughs. "Your father told you a lot, didn't he? Ah, yes, of course . . ." His eyes become thoughtful; he is obviously listening to things going through her head and considering them. "I suppose growing up with a mother and father who look at each other _that_ way would make it easy to believe in anything magical."

Bella finds herself smiling softly. Then she sees Jacob's daughter looking straight at her, suddenly ignoring everyone else in the room. Edward looks back and forth between them and says, "Yes. Well . . . you two probably do have a lot you're curious to talk about."

Somehow Bella and the woman find themselves alone in the kitchen. Bella makes her some tea that they keep around just in case they get human visitors. This all reminds her of something, but she can't figure it out yet.

"I thought it would seem like a more peaceful gesture if I came to speak to you instead of a Protector," the young Bella says - young by comparison, at least, for she looks nearly forty. "And I'm one of the only living relatives of the wolf pack of my dad's generation who really believes the legends. Most people my age think it's all just superstition."

Bella grins. "So did your father when I first knew him."

"To tell you the truth, though . . . we might not have bothered to send anyone to come confirm that the treaty was still in effect. But I was pretty curious to meet you."

"Yes. I suspected so."

The woman stares at her in amazement, at her angelically beautiful features and deadly white pallor, but not with _that_ much amazement, trying to control herself from staring and being rude. Bella wonders just how close she and Quil's werewolf son are, and what kind of strange things she has seen to be able to walk into a house of vampires almost completely casually.

After she answers several shy questions about her kind - strange small talk - Bella says, "Please tell me. How is ... well ... How's your mother doing? Without him, I mean? I've been thinking it must have been very hard, for someone who had that kind of a relationship with him..."

The other nods seriously. "Yeah. It was hard. I was really worried for a while that she was just going to end up passing soon after him. But she's gotten a lot better. It's kind of impossible to explain how, but my whole life I had never been able to imagine one of them without the other, like they were always one unit. That's the kind of bond between people that can be more of a curse than a blessing because the possibility of such a devastating loss is maybe not even worth it. But she's found reasons to go on without him. She misses him horribly, of course, but at the same time she feels greatly blessed because they were lucky enough to find each other at all, and that he did live this long. She's managed to still be happy."

Bella nods, staring off thoughtfully.

"It's nice of you to ask," she adds.

Bella looks back at her face. "Well . . . It was hard for me to say goodbye to him, too. A long time ago."

"I'm afraid I never really understood. Why did you have to?"

Bella stares at her face searchingly, trying to see how much she knows. Of course. It would be practically impossible for the daughter of parents who were that devoted to each other to ever imagine that for Jacob there had ever been anyone else but Megan. It might never have even occurred to her that her father's friend he named her after had ever been more than a friend.

"Because . . . I had to make a choice between two lives and I just couldn't try to have it both ways," Bella finally answers. "I had to give up everything from my former life or nothing. It's not the kind of choice anyone should ever have to make, but I did."

"So you could be with your husband?"

She smiles. "Yes. So I could be with Edward."

Bella Black looks down at the tea in her cup awkwardly for a moment, hesitating to say what she's thinking. "I have to get going. But...I'm sorry, but would you mind very much if I wanted to come and see you and your family again? Maybe my mother would even be interested in meeting you for once. See, I never imagined I would actually get the chance. And now that I've met you, I suddenly feel like there's so much about my father's life I never knew."

Bella's brow contracts in surprise. "I don't know," she says, taken aback. "You don't think that might be a little strange?"

But suddenly she remembers what the tea reminds her of: sitting around with the wolf pack at Emily's house, feeling oddly included and unwelcome at the same time. How strange indeed it would be to start welcoming a friend of wolves into their house like she is distant family...or something like that.

Jacob Black's daughter is looking at her with a nervous, unsure expression back on her face, and as Bella regards her closely, she thinks of how she accepted long ago that she can never have children of her own. Yet there is something effortless, if careful, about talking to this woman. She feels like she could easily be . . . well, no. Not like a _mother_ to her, but maybe something else. An aunt. An older sister.

Perhaps, she thinks, there is no harm anymore in her having a little of both worlds.

So she just shrugs and smiles at her. "Why not?"

Emmett's big voice carries from the next room. "Rose, do you know what I did with that - ? Oh. Hey, _Bell?"_

Both of them look up in response to the nickname, and then look back at each other and laugh. 


	14. no endings

**xiv. no endings **

It is twilight once again; yet another day is ending. Edward and Bella are lying in the grass in their meadow looking up at the darkening sky, their fingers brushing against each other where their hands rest close together. They do not speak at all, but Edward softly hums her lullaby. It has been a long time since she heard him do that, and it makes her smile as she rests with her eyes closed. 

Today would be Bella's eightieth birthday if she were still human. That morning Edward asked her, "Do you regret that you're not near death like you should be?" and she teased, "Not _yet_."

She has come to understand what Edward meant a long time ago when he talked about this time of day always being a little sad for him. She can't say that she does not miss walking around freely in the sunlight. She can't say she doesn't miss many other things besides, things that are much worse to be without.

But the pain of having to make the decision a long time ago of what she was willing to give up has come to seem to her like a very human thing, something she is long past. Neither choice was the right one or the wrong one; there was only always a right and wrong way to accept whichever fate she chose. Any kind of existence will have its difficulties that are hard to bear, but any existence can also be withstood and have its rewards. Even in the worst kind of circumstances, in death, in hell, in eternal darkness, some kind of light can always be found. Over time, she has stopped feeling like she ever lost the others she loved, for now even after they're all dead, she is still here and carrying on with them in her memory, and in another human lifetime she still will be. She never really had to choose between Edward and Jacob; she couldn't even if she wanted to. She has them both still, always sharing a place in her heart, in a more peaceful an unconflicted way than ever before. Just as Jacob promised he would always be there, always waiting in the wings, always her friend, even when they could no longer see each other, she is still thinking of him and taking care of the part of himself he left behind with her.

I am not giving up on you, she thinks whenever he comes to mind. She promises.

And when Edward sits up and leans over her, surprising her with a quiet kiss when she still hasn't opened her eyes, the sun is going down but the bold, breaking dawn behind her eyelids is blinding. She and everyone who is a part of her, all of them are here now. With their love they are all forever bound, they are illuminated and find each other in the dark again and again, they persist and are always fighting and struggling against dying, against ends. They live.


End file.
